If a new U.S. administration blocks the flow of remittances — the estimated $20 billion that Mexicans working in the U.S. send home each year — then joint efforts to stop money laundering and other illicit forms of finance will be dealt a dangerous setback, a senior Mexican official warned Thursday. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has vowed, if elected, to make Mexico pay to build a wall along the entire Southwest border, even if it means impounding remittance payments. Fernando Aportela, Mexico’s deputy secretary for finance, said any attempt to seize remittances would force Mexicans to hide...

The president of the National Border Patrol Council testified in the Senate Thursday that the Obama administration’s loose immigration policy is the biggest factor driving illegal immigration into the United States, which in turn helps fund Mexican drug cartels. “Most illegal immigrants believe that they will either not be caught, or even if they are caught, they will not be deported back to their home country. Most believe that they will simply be issued a Notice to Appear (NTA) and will be released,” Brandon Judd said before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest. “Candidly, they are not...

The Justice Department has confirmed that a .50 caliber sniper rifled found at El Chapo's Mexican hideout and used to shoot down helicopters was sold through the Fast and Furious program. The rifle was found inside the Los Mochis property where the Sinaloa Cartel kingpin was discovered hiding on January 8 this year before a raid by the Mexican Marines that led to his capture. Excerpt, more at link. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3495177/US-Rifle-El-Chapo-hideout-tied-gun-smuggle-operation.html

The Mexican government is warning of a strategy by drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to try to loosen the security measures at the maximum-security prison where he has already escaped once. National security commissioner Renato Sales told reporters Monday that recent statements made by an alleged daughter of Guzman to The Guardian newspaper that the government had betrayed him suggest a media strategy. …

Court documents filed in federal court claim that a suspected drug traffickers linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel used a Middle Eastern honor system to launder drug proceeds. Known as a Hawala, members of the conspiracy would be hired by cartel members in Canada and Mexico to move drug proceeds through the honor system that does not leave a paper trail as couriers move the money between countries. “Drug traffickers in Canada would generate drug proceeds from multi-kilogram and multi-pound sales and distribution of drugs provided by Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel,” court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed. A...

The U.S. government is fighting to keep details of how its own federal gun agents let Mexican drug cartels buy rifles in Arizona illegally out of an upcoming murder trial in which two men will be tried for the killing of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry who died after he ran into men carrying those same illegal guns. In a court filing Monday, prosecutors are trying to keep some details about the guns found at the slain agent’s murder scene away from the jury. Terry, 40, was part of the Border Patrol’s elite BORTAC unit. In December 2010, the...

Media Cover Up: U.S. Government Invokes National Security to Conceal Deal Cut with Mexican Drug Cartel Tuesday, 4. October 2011 Mainstream Media Assists Government in Cloaking Evidence of an Ugly Duplicity in the So-Called Drug War On Saturday, October 1, 2011, investigative journalist Bill Conroy of the Narcosphere reported scandalous and highly troubling new developments in the criminal case against accused Mexican narco-trafficker Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla. The breaking story unravels the U.S. governmentÂ’s ugly national-security interests in the drug war by exposing a quid pro quo deal between the US government and the most powerful international narco-trafficking organization...

Mexican authorities have launched a manhunt to find drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman, who has broken out of prison again, the country’s National Security Commission said Sunday. Guards at the Altiplano Federal Prison discovered during a routine check on Saturday that Guzman, known as “El Chapo,” was missing, a statement from the commission said. Guzman escaped through a hole in his cell that led to a tunnel nearly a mile long, Mexico National Security spokesman Monte Alejandro Rubido García confirmed Sunday morning at a press conference in Mexico City. The hole led to a tunnel that was lighted and ventilated, the...

The Mexican navy confirmed on Saturday that a U.S. marshal was wounded in Mexico while working with naval personnel in the northwestern state of Sinaloa during the summer. But the navy denied a report in the Wall Street Journal that the marshal and other U.S. officers were dressed as Mexican marines while participating in an operation against organized crime. It said the marshal was only training Mexican naval personnel and wasn’t wearing a Mexican uniform. …

Immigration: When California Gov. Jerry Brown hung out the "all welcome" sign for illegals, Mexico's drug cartels heard him loud and clear. Raids on Thursday left lawmen declaring Los Angeles a cash-laundering mecca. Roping off 100 blocks of downtown Los Angeles this week, federal agents from the U.S. attorney's office raided roughly 70 garment district businesses along with a few houses in tony Westwood and Beverly Hills. The suspected crime was laundering money for Mexico's Sinaloa cartel. Agents hauled out $65 million in cash stuffed in duffel bags, suitcases and boxes, some of it blood-spattered. The cash came from hostage...

**SNIP** We can now see these toxic forces converging in the purposeful sabotage of our southern border. The Sinaloa cartel is the biggest drug cartel in Chicago, and it received weapons from our DOJ during the “Fast and Furious” smuggling program. Valerie Jarrett met with “immigration activists” (like La Raza) in the weeks before the assault on our border. Iran’s terrorist arm Hezb'allah has agents colluding with drug mafias and people smuggling all over South America. Breaking down our southern borders serves all three. **SNIP** But it took Obama to betray Egypt’s Mubarak, the single greatest pillar of peace in...

One of the roughest Mexican drug cartels has allegedly been hiring a ruthless American gang to kidnap and torture those who cross the cartel inside the United States. The Sinaloa cartel reportedly hired MS-13 gang members to fly from Los Angeles, Calif., to St. Paul, Minn., to find the people who stole 30 pounds of meth and $200,000 from a stash house. Police say three MS-13 gang members kidnapped two teens who they believed stole the meth and cash. Then they tied them up and tortured them, even cutting one victim’s pinky with a scissor. The teens were eventually let...

'El Chapo' and El Banco: What You Haven’t Been Told CRIME POLITICS-US media are celebrating the arrest of alleged Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, whose Sinaloa Cartel is thought to be the most powerful trafficker in the world and "a main combatant in a spasm of violence that has left tens of thousands dead in Mexico" (New York Times, 2/22/14). US Attorney General Eric Holder called the arrest a "landmark achievement": "The criminal activity Guzman allegedly directed contributed to the death and destruction of millions of lives across the globe through drug addiction, violence and corruption." But...

MEXICO CITY—The head of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel was captured overnight by U.S. and Mexican authorities at a hotel in Mazatlan, Mexico, The Associated Press has learned. A senior U.S. law enforcement official said Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was taken alive overnight in the beach resort town. The official was not authorized to discuss the arrest and spoke on condition of anonymity.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel who was the world's most powerful drug lord was captured overnight by U.S. and Mexican authorities at a condominium in Mazatlan, Mexico, The Associated Press learned Saturday, ending a bloody decades-long career that terrorized swaths of the country.A senior U.S. law enforcement official said Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was taken alive overnight by Mexican marines in the beach resort town. The official was not authorized to discuss the arrest and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The world’s most notorious and powerful drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, has reportedly been captured in Mexico. The head of the Sinoloa Cartel - nicknamed Chapo or "shorty" - was caught last night, according to the AP, at a hotel resort in Mazatlan in a joint US-Mexico operation. Forbes ranked Guzman 67 out of 72 on their list of the World’s Most Powerful People. With revenues believed to exceed $3bn, his Sinaloa cartel is easily the most powerful in Mexico, responsible for an estimated 25% of all illegal drugs that enter the U.S. via Mexico. While this may...

Archaeological finds in the southern part of the western state of Sinaloa suggest that the culture that developed in that region gave rise to the ceramics at the Aztatlan Complex, Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said. More than 200 archaeological sites have been catalogued in the region that enable scientists to understand the dynamic of the human occupation of that region during the pre-Columbian epoch, said INAH in a communique. In contrast to the belief that only nomadic groups lived there, evidence has been found of various settlements dating back to about the year 250 A.D. On...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel condemned a Thursday night shooting on Chicago’s South Side that wounded 13 people, including a three-year-old boy. “Senseless and brazen acts of violence have no place in Chicago and betray all that we stand for,” said Obama’s former chief of staff in the first of a series of tweets Friday morning. “The perpetrators of this crime will be brought to justice and prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” Emanuel added. Witnesses said several gunmen fired at least 20 shots at a group on basketball courts, according to NBC News’s Chicago affiliate. The station said...

The pretty thing won't have to serve another day in a U.S. prison. A federal judge in Miami, FL has sentenced Sandra Avila Beltran to time served after pleading guilty to her role in the Sinaloa cartel which once was headed by boyfriend Juan Diego Espinosa Ramire, and the Queen of the Pacific soon will return to her native Mexico where she's known to indulge in a lavish lifestyle and cosmetic surgery as reported by Hannah Strange for The Telegraph: "the judge sentenced her to 70 months in prison but ruled that the penalty had been fulfilled by her five...

Apparently he was a sensitive boy. Mexican authorities say the teenage son of imprisoned Sinaloa boss Jose Carrasco Coronel is a suspect in the murder of two 15-year-old classmates after getting teased by the pair as reported by The Associated Press.

Another weapon from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency's controversial Operation Fast and Furious was recently recovered at a Mexican crime scene, CBS News has learned. Congressional investigators say the crime scene was likely where a recent shootout took place between reported Sinaloa drug cartel members and the Mexican military, in which Sinaloa beauty queen Maria Susana Flores Gamez and four others were killed. According to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the Justice Department did not notify Congress of the Fast and Furious firearm recovery in November, even though Grassley has requested an accounting of weapons that...

Friday, 05 October 2012 13:00 Stratfor Sources: U.S. Troops in Mexico as Feds Aid Cartels Written by Alex Newman Federal authorities in the United States have been quietly supporting certain Mexican criminal empires, especially the Sinaloa drug cartel, in a bid to solidify the syndicates’ reign as dominant powerbrokers in particular territories, according to leaked e-mails from a U.S.-based Mexican diplomat to the private intelligence firm Stratfor. If cartel chiefs cooperate with authorities, “governments will allow controlled drug trades,” the diplomatic source wrote. Other information unearthed so far in the leak, much of it coming from a variety of sources,...

The city may be nearly 2,000 miles from Mexico, but the country’s drug cartels are so deeply embedded in Chicago that local and federal law enforcement are forced to operate as if they are “on the border,” according to Jack Riley, special agent in charge for the Chicago Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Because of Chicago’s location in the heart of the United States, its large Mexican population and its abundance of street gang activity, drug cartels have designated the city as one of its main hubs of operation in America, Riley told TheBlaze in an exclusive...

The victims of another bloody weekend in the city were between 15 and 44 years old The city saw another bloody weekend as seven people — including a teenager — were killed and 24 others were wounded in separate shootings since Friday evening. Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy on Saturday defended the department’s anti-violence strategy, which he believes is taking root. "We're not winning, we're not losing. We’re basically treading water," McCarthy said. He said that in the month of August, "we had some trouble because some of these retaliatory shootings are happening quicker than we can stop them." The...

Nineteen people were shot in attacks across the South and West sides between about 5:20 p.m. Thursday and 1:30 a.m. Friday - including 13 people during a single 30-minute period - according to the Chicago Police Department. The shootings peaked between about 9:15 and 9:45 p.m. Thursday when 13 people were shot, including eight in a single incident at 79th Street and Essex Avenue about 9:30 p.m. Police are still trying to sort out that shooting, the second of three incidents that left multiple people wounded since 8 p.m.

Chicago likes to compare itself to other world cities, so Ward Room thought it would find out how we rank in violence. It turns out no one can top us. Among what are considered Alpha world cities, Chicago has the highest murder rate --higher even than the Third World metropolises of Mexico City and Sao Paolo. Here’s how we rank in murders per 100,000 among cities we consider our peers, based on a projected murder total of 505 for this year....New York 6.0 Los Angeles 7.5 Mexico City 8.0 Moscow 9.6 Sao Paolo 15.6 Chicago 19.4

Executive privilege, conceptually speaking, is a lot like the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution: Assert it, and folks assume that there’s a coverup under way....In recent weeks, Justice officials have “retracted” earlier sworn statements —including one this week that the operation began under the Bush administration. All in all, it stinks on ice.

The two most important criminal organizations in Mexico are engaged in all-out war, and the most spectacular battles are being fought for the cameras as the combatants pursue a strategy of intimidation and propaganda by dumping ever greater numbers of headless bodies in public view — the victims most likely innocents. No longer limiting themselves to regional skirmishes, the older, established drug-smuggling Sinaloa cartel is now fighting the brash, young paramilitary Zetas crime organization across multiple front lines in Mexico in a desperate fight, according to U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officials and security analysts on both sides of the...

I have warned and written about this particular subject for over three years—since before Obama was elected—aka “coronated.“ It is only now that many others finally seem to be getting the message. However, this is not something to be criticized. It is to be applauded, as it means they are finally and inexorably awakening to the truth. They are to be applauded and not insulted. I noticed this morning that—after a few of the latest Obama assaults on the US Constitution and liberties of We-the-People—some in the media

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel. During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money...

Degenerate meth heads in the United States have good reason to celebrate the new year. 2012 promises to be a banner year in meth supply as the powerful Sinalo cartel headed by Forbes-listed billinoaire Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is ramping up production in Guatemala as reported by The Associated Press: "Guzman is taking advantage of Guatemala's remote, isolated mountains and an alliance with a key Guatemalan trafficker to make the Central American nation a new international meth production base." China is a principal supplier to the Sinaloa cartel of the precursor chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine, and within the last...

‘Fast and Furious’ Linked to Immunity Deal Between U.S. and Sinaloa Cartel, Trafficking Defendant Alleges in Court PapersA Mexican drug trafficker awaiting trial in a Chicago federal court claims that the notorious Sinaloa cartel received weapons from "Operation Fast and Furious" under an alleged immunity agreement that the U.S. government made with cartel leaders, in exchange for information on rival gangs.The defendant in a trafficking case before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Vicente Jesus Zambada-Niebla, also claims the immunity deal allowed the criminal cartel to "continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs" into the United...

The Hizbullah terrorist organization is in hot water over a scheme to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in multi-national drug trafficking revenues. According to a report published by the World News Tribune, the Lebanon-based terrorist organization is using American banks and other financial institutions to process money earned from trafficking in South America. The complaint filed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Justice, charges Hizbullah with using the money to buy used cars in the U.S. for transport to West Africa, where they are then sold, mostly in Benin. U.S. Attorney Preet Bhara noted, "It...

A series of recent law enforcement actions indicates the depth of Iranian-tied criminal activity in Mexico may be greater than previously known. In October, a Texas-car salesman was arrested in connection with an Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington. Prosecutors say officials in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps believed they were dealing with a "large and sophisticated" Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit. A $100,000 down payment on the hit shows the Iranians were comfortable dealing with the cartel representative, who in fact was a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant. Earlier this month, prosecutors in Virginia...

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican army says it has dealt a significant blow to the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel with the arrest of the cartel leader's security chief. The army says special military forces seized computer files and other data when they detained Felipe Cabrera Sarabia. But Chief Army spokesman Gen. Ricardo Trevillo offered few details about the hunt for cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Trevillo told a news conference Monday that Cabrera was captured without a shot being fired Friday in the capital of Sinaloa state, headquarters of the cartel allegedly run by

Arizona authorities have arrested some 200 people, and seized $7.8 million in cash and more than 1,200 pounds of drugs following an investigation they say has dismantled an "extensive" drug trafficking cell tied to the powerful Sinaloa cartel, federal and state authorities announced Tuesday. Authorities announcing the 15-month-long investigation said that although the Sinaloa cartel almost immediately regenerates after one of its cells have been taken down, their investigation certainly struck a blow. "Arresting a drug dealer is one thing but if we can actually follow that backwards and take out the head of the snake of this organization, we...

As we continue to watch the general uproar over the Operation Fast and Furious program, and specifically what Attorney General Holder knew and when he knew it, it needs to be noted that perjury is not the only apparent violation of law to have occurred. I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities — to...

Elaborate tunnel and discovery of more than 32 tons of marijuana are the latest in recent record busts as a new group boosts production after the decline of the Arellano Felix cartel. Reporting from San Diego— Smugglers stacked the bundles of dope on a freight elevator that descended to an underground staging area, where electric carts whisked the marijuana down a tunnel into California. The passageway linked a warehouse in Tijuana with another nondescript building in San Diego, and just like several other drug tunnels, its discovery this week yielded another jackpot seizure.

An international group of online hackers is warning a Mexican drug cartel to release one of its members, kidnapped from a street protest, or it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate's associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates' businesses. The vow is a bizarre cyber twist to Mexico's ongoing drug war, as a group that has no guns is squaring off against the Zetas, a cartel blamed for thousands of deaths as well as introducing beheadings and other frightening brutality. "You made a huge mistake by taking one of us. Release...

With Operation Fast and Furious headlining the news, there is no doubt civilian arms have been trafficked into Mexico. However, many of the arms used by Mexican cartels are NOT supplied by civilian gun outlets in the United States. Based upon the statistics I have compiled, our State and Defense Departments may be the premier suppliers of weaponry to Mexican drug cartels — not the US civilian.From 2003-2009, over 150,000 Mexican soldiers deserted from their ranks. Drug cartels became so confident in their recruitment of military personnel that they posted help wanted ads for hit men, traffickers, and guards. When...

Associated Press CHICAGO (AP) — The leaders of a powerful Mexican cartel, frustrated that U.S. law enforcement was interfering with their lucrative drug business, plotted a military-style attack on a U.S. or Mexican government building to "send the gringos a message," federal prosecutors allege in documents filed this week. Leaders of the Sinaloa cartel sought dozens of American-made weapons for an attack in Mexico City on possible targets that included government buildings, an embassy or consulate or media outlet, according to documents in the case against Vicente Zambada, an alleged top lieutenant in the cartel. Zambada is in jail in...

The evidence is mounting that the Fast and Furious gun giveaway was orchestrated and/or initiated from the top of the Obama administration. Forbes Magazine is calling it “Obama’s Watergate.” Are we to believe that they gave away enough guns to equip a small army of narcoterrorists out of a simple error? We would have to be pretty gullible to believe that. We have to ask just what they intended to achieve by doing this. It was a truly extravagant gift to the Sinaloa Federation Cartel. It was not just expensive in tax dollars; it was expensive in political capital, and...

AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Public Safety is warning parents about drug cartels recruiting Texas high school students. DPS officials say they caught a 12-year-old boy driving a stolen pickup truck containing more than 800 pounds of marijuana last week. Last month, two Texas teenagers were lured to Mexico where they were kidnapped, beaten, ransomed and released in a remote area along the Rio Grande River. In one Texas border county, more than 25 juveniles were arrested for drug trafficking within the past year. “Mexican cartels have corrupted nearly an entire generation of youth living in Northern Mexico and...

Janet Napolitano spent much of the spring sounding like a broken record ensuring that the U.S.-Mexico border is safe when the reality is that stretches are controlled by drug-trafficking organizations. A new federal report exposing the ugly truth about the southern border has left President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary with egg on her face. Published by the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, the document contradicts much of what Napolitano has preached in the last few months during highly publicized jaunts to the crime-infested region. Remember this? The Mexican border “is as secure as it has ever been.” Or what...

Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman's wife, Emma Coronel, gave birth Aug. 15 to twin girls at Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, according to birth records and a senior U.S. law enforcement official. ... Turns out Coronel, a 22-year-old former beauty queen, holds U.S. citizenship, which entitles her to travel freely to the United States. By being born in California, and to a mother who is an American citizen, her little girls also have U.S. citizenship. Guzman, 54, the multibillionaire fugitive head of the Sinaloa cartel, married Coronel the day she turned 18 in a lavish wedding in the highlands of central Mexico...

The stench from Washington is getting stronger. Rep. Darrell Issa has called for a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of the festering mess known as Operation Fast and Furious. Hatched somewhere in the bowels of the Justice Department, that misbegotten scheme had the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives deliberately allowing high-powered guns to “walk” from Arizona and elsewhere into Mexico: Our agents turned a blind eye toward the straw purchasers who were funneling the weapons to the drug cartels. The (dumb) idea was to trace cross-border arms trafficking, and so prove the (false) claim that 90...

Jean Baptiste Kingery seems to be yet another thug that took advantage of the Obama Administration's criminal stimulus package for the southwest, building grenades and IEDs for the Sinaloa cartel. So what did the Department of Justice do when they caught him. They released him free as a bird within hours.Federal authorities are probing why the U.S. in 2010 let go an Arizona man accused of supplying grenades to a Mexican drug cartel, a case that played a role in the ouster last week of the nation's top firearms regulator and the U.S. attorney in Phoenix. U.S. officials said missteps...

Officials with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration say they took down several bosses from the Sinaloa Cartel in a move they say "decimated" a Utah-based cell of the Mexican crime ring. At least seven arrests came Tuesday .. part of an 18-month investigation that has yielded more than 30 arrests in Utah, California and Nevada. Authorities have also seized more than 30 pounds of methamphetamine, 200 pounds of marijuana, a kilogram of heroin and a kilogram of cocaine, as well as more than $322,000 and guns.

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) — Two decapitated bodies and scalped heads were dumped outside a Sam's Club store in Acapulco while three headless corpses were found nearby on the resort city's main tourist strip, authorities in Mexico said Saturday. The bodies discovered outside the Sam's Club were cut into more than 20 pieces, Guerrero state's Public Security Department said in a statement.

U.S. federal agents allegedly cut a deal with the Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed it to traffic tons of narcotics across the border, in exchange for information about rival cartels, according to documents filed in federal court. Click here to view the Sinaloa Cartel case document.